Euphoria
by LilyEverlasting
Summary: AU. From the ashes of a fallen Konoha, a new future was born. The age of the Uchiha is at hand, but a certain boy, a certain stealthy Fox, a band of misfit rebels, a leader's son, a girl with no future, and a wanted man might just change that. Warnings inside. Slash and Het romance subplots. Pairings are a mystery
1. Brother of the Fox

_**Warnings:**_AU, non-ninja world with sci-fi themes/elements. Violence. Language. Bordering on dark. **Slash and Het pairings/romance. This is not **** a Naruto x Menma fic. **Suggestive themes. OC. Maybe OOC. Want pairings? Read and find out mwahaha. Just be prepared for a variety of possibilities.

**Disclaimer:** I do not own Naruto. Naruto and everything affiliated with it rightfully belongs to Kishimoto. I make no profit off of this and am merely a fan.

* * *

_** Euphoria**_

_**Chapter 1: Brother of the Fox**_

He wasn't real. Never was, they said.

A flash of blue, a grin stretched too tight. Get them, Naruto, get them. They can't talk to us like that. He was the voice in my ear, low and quiet. The voice of reason, of strength. I had a memory of him coaxing me to steal an apple from a kiosk one summer, when the sun was glaring and the heat was sticky. We were six. He'd needled me until I inched forward, pretending to be interested in the goldfish on the counter, already sagging to the bottom of the green glass bowl like a lump of fool's gold.

I snatched the apple, and the old bitch behind the counter caught my wrist so fast, her yellow nails cut little half-moons into my skin. She spanked me, good and hard until I cried, telling me I was lucky she didn't rat me out to my parents.

"Little shit," she'd muttered. When I walked back to the alley, my ass just as sore as my pride, he was laughing so hard he had doubled over with a cramp. I kept swiping at my eyes, face pinched.

"I knew you couldn't do it," he'd said.

The boy from room 2A cries too much. He's sobbing again, yelling for someone without a name, and he reminds me I'm not in my memories, only in the asylum. There are nights I want to scream back, tell him to shut up because some of us actually like to sleep.

Except the boy next door in 2C. He never sleeps, and I never hear him. Ever. Sometimes I imagine that when he finally decides to speak, dust will flit past his lips. During mealtimes, he stares at his food like it'll start to sizzle if he glares hard enough. I know he doesn't sleep, because his eyes are ringed with purple shadows so dark he began to line his eyes with kohl, as if the rest of us wouldn't be able to notice after. He almost killed the kid who called him a fag for it.

Now we all pretend he doesn't exist, as if mere eye contact will tickle his dangerous side.

2A stops screaming for No-name. Maybe they finally sedated him for the night. It's sadistic, but suddenly I miss my needle and the feeling of serenity that followed. I'd dream of birds and clouds and the smell of fresh cut grass. I dream of him, and I'm not alone, bounding through trees, sky, and fire. Now I only smell sterile hallways, and the acrid tang of urine that hangs stale in the cold air. I'm alone again, someplace quiet and dark and icy. I imagine it's snowing outside. Fat, white flakes that flutter slowly to the ground like starved ballerinas. That's why it's so damn cold, why the floor milks the heat out of me if I step onto it without my socks.

He'll come back for me. He always does, and then I won't be so cold.

The red light above the steel door to my cell blinks, flickers, and finally goes out. The last rays of light in the room are snuffed out, quick as a candle. I think I hear the wind howl outside. I try to listen, but it's drowned out by yells, cat-calls, and vicious lullabies.

"Dead boy comin', dead boy comin', see how he runs? See how he runs?"

The boys like to say the Pit winds right down to Hell itself. I've seen the hallway, once or twice, on my way to morning meal. Rumors breed like wildfire around it, and those who laugh at it are the most afraid. I know, because their eyes go too wide, show too much white. The stone steps lead down a black throat, down, down, down, until it hits the prison's basement. At night, orange shadows play along the black walls, and you can hear a metallic clink from somewhere deep below. The Beast the boys call it. The Beast is hungry again. They'll be watching through the metal bars, eyes burning, hopping from foot to foot like monkeys.

No one in the Senju Institution for Mental Health misses a dead boy walking to the Pit.

I fall asleep listening to the boys sing and laugh and sob, a cacophony of wails. I dream of the beast, of fire licking my skin, but he's there to save me, and he tells me he knew I couldn't do it.

* * *

"Do you know why you're here, Naruto?" Dr. Yakushi is watching me closely, with eyes that gleam like beetle shells in the sun. Black, but bright. The gloom of the white room reflects itself in his glasses, which he keeps pushing up his nose. He crosses his legs, bounces his foot. Waits. I stare at his gray hair, wonder why it's so devoid of color when Yakushi looks like he can't be any older than thirty.

My heart's beating so hard I can feel it in my skull. My teeth chatter. Why is it so fucking cold? I feel naked on the metal examining table under my slip of a hospital gown, hooked up to wires until I feel like a spider with too many legs. A nurse stands by the machine, her fingers twitching. I know it's because she wants to pull that lever.

Everyone here must be a closet sadist.

_Beep, beep, beep_ the machines whir.

"Because everyone thinks I killed that man," I manage to croak. My voice doesn't sound right. It's too thin. Dr. Yakushi clucks, like a disappointed mother hen, and my body hums with or flight. I've been trained to fear that sound, to resent it.

"Naruto, you need to stop lying to yourself. Everyone _thinks_ is different from everyone _knows_. You're suggesting uncertainty." His eyes dart to the nurse, who inches towards the lever, but I begin to sputter.

"Okay, okay, they know!" I holler, desperate. The nurse doesn't pull the lever. Dr. Yakushi scribbles furiously in his notebook.

"Are you confessing, Naruto?" he asks. A heavy silence stretches on, thick and suffocating. My voice lodges itself in my throat, and I fight back a fierce anger. I didn't do it. I didn't do it. I didn't do it.

I remember a house nestled in the woods, a man with a family, a dog, and wealth. A man with eyes as red as blood. Look at him, hiding away with his money while the rest of us suffer. Look at them, laughing while they stuff their kids fat and watch the rest of us starve. Disgusting. Where's our wealth? They took it from us, those Uchihas. Remember how they took it from us? he would tell me, a fire in his eyes. And for a moment, I would hate them too.

_Wait, don't. There's got to be another way to make a point_. I'd urged him, pleaded. He had laughed me off, already melting into the night shadows to creep towards the house.

_I knew you wouldn't be able to do this_, he'd said.

When he killed the man out of spite, I got left behind. The Uchiha's wife, screaming on the floor in a pool of his blood, saw my face when I yelled for Fox, afraid and sick. They never saw anyone but me. Just me.

"Remember Naruto, it will all stop once you admit to yourself that he was never real. That you need help."

I pause before condemning myself. "I didn't kill anyone."

Dr. Yakushi stares at me for a moment, tapping his pen against his notebook. Tap, tap, tap. "Then who did?" he asks, baiting me. I almost don't answer. I know what they'll do, but I can't help it. I guess I'll die saying it, but only because it's the truth, and that's the one thing they can't take from me.

"Fox." This time, I don't scream when the nurse pulls the lever.

* * *

I'm floating again, down a river made of bubbles that pop pleasantly against my skin. I laugh, because it's ridiculous. Butterflies flit past, glittering in the pale sun with gilded wings. The world is washed out, like watercolors on paper. I smell it again, fresh cut grass, so I look for his blue eyes, his shark smile that shows all of his teeth. It makes him look inviting and dangerous at the same time.

He named himself Fox when we were eight. He chose it because it was odd, something not likely to be forgotten.

"Why should I keep the name our mother gave me when she isn't even here? If I'm on my own, I can call myself whatever the hell I want." So he'd jumped up on a crate in the dirty alley, like a king above thieves, hollering at the sky.

"I'm Fox! I'm Fox! And nobody ever forget it!" Foxes are cunning and fast, just like him. He could steal you blind staring up at you with a smile, disappear into the shadows quieter than an owl's wing beats when he sensed danger.

He always said I wasn't fast enough. I was stupid, or I made him look clumsy. Once, he punched me in the nose for tripping over a rope in the fishing dock, ruining our chances to steal a bucket of eels for lunch. I was five. I cried and cried and cried, saying he broke my nose. Later, when I slept, I felt his fingers ghost over my face as he put his blanket over me.

"Sorry," he had whispered. It was the only time he ever said it, and I never forgot it.

My body aches, tingles with the last vestiges of electricity as I come to, still strapped to the examining table. The effects of the needle makes my world fuzzy and warm, and the light above seems to hover like a firefly. I would have kept staring at it, if I hadn't realized I wasn't alone.

The boy from next door, 2C, is sitting in the chair in the bare corner, all doom and gloom and murder. He's hunched, as if he's trying to fold into himself, and his kohl-rimmed eyes are trained on the floor, messy red hair hiding his face. From how its knotted in clumps, I'm guessing he hasn't taken a shower in a while, but neither have I.

He seems to realize I'm watching, and his head snaps up. His eyes are green, like bottle glass. He has the type of gaze that feels like he's ripping into your soul, laying all your secrets bare. I stare at his eyes, at the shadows the kohl tries to steal.

I say, "I'm gonna bust out of here." He only watches me, silent. I didn't think he'd reply. He never does. Then I hear footsteps, so I clamp my eyes closed, as if I'd never woken up. Their voices float into the room, preceding their footfalls on the tile.

"...still insists that his alter ego is the murderer."

"Shock therapy has made no improvements?" comes the curious reply. I inwardly recoil at the quiet, hissing voice.

"None that I can see."

"So he is unfit to transfer to the prison?" the hissing voice is eager, almost hopeful.

"Still, I'm afraid," Yakushi says. There is a pause, a shuffling of clothing and feet.

"And this one?" I know he means 2C. Dr. Yakushi scoffs in response.

"He hasn't spoken since he's attainment. Doesn't seem to possess any form of actual intelligence. I doubt he understands what we're saying now. He's violent. Killed his father. Almost had to quarantine him for attacking another patient."

"A perfect candidate," the hissing voice hums.

"Exactly." Dr. Yakushi replies steadily.

There's another pause. "Brilliant. See to it that their termination notices are sent to the Warden. I'm sorely lacking in test subjects-"

"Shouldn't we move the lab?"

There's a snort of laughter. "Of course not. The asylum is rarely inspected, and the basement is a safe haven. The government doesn't give a damn about what happens to these boys behind closed doors, and why should they? They're murderers and thieves, or too slow for society. They aren't wanted."

Fear overtakes me. Dead boys comin', dead boys comin', see how they run?

I'm supposed to be asleep, so I keep my breathing steady. Cold fingers are running down my leg, poking at my shoulders, grabbing at my chin. I keep still.

"I've had my eye on this one, I'll admit. Of course, he was a lost cause the minute I admitted him here." His breath ghosts over my face, warm and coppery. "Tell the Warden they're too dangerous. Not even shock treatment can smoke the Fox out of this boy."

I'm trying not to panic, trying not to breathe too fast.

_Where are you? Why did you leave me here?_ I begin to wonder if he cut his losses and left me. For one sickening moment, I'm so terrified I begin to wonder if Fox was ever really there, and that's when I realize how far gone I am.

* * *

When we were eleven, Konoha's horizon grew dark with the promises of war.

_One, two, three, four, five, six, seven!_

Fox would count the booms, laugh at the thrill of bombs gouging the earth outside of the village's gates. The impact would make the ground quake. Sometimes the ceiling in the orphanage shuddered, spraying us with dust. At night, when the bombs cracked, the sky lit up. Maybe the light would have been beautiful, if death and destruction didn't trail behind it. I had this fear that the ceiling would fall on me while I slept, and there were days I couldn't remember falling asleep.

Fox would watch me, hands hooked behind his head as he lounged on the lumpy bed he hated, eyes bright in the gloom. "Pussy," he'd say derisively. "I'm not scared. If I ever see the assholes who are doing this, I'd fight 'em for doing this to us, not hide under my blanket." I didn't even have the heart to scowl at him. I would cover my ears with my hands. Count the kids in the room with us out loud, as if that could soften the sound. Every day, there was a new face in the orphanage, someone timid or scared or angry. I'd watch the attendants for our hall bustle past with pale faces.

We were hardly allowed to play in the streets anymore. It wasn't as easy anymore to go milling through a sea of people, wishing we would get lost and end up somewhere magical, or hugged and comforted by a rich merchant who had always wanted children of his own. Now the streets were mostly empty. Wide and dusty, with a few scattered people hurrying through like ants trapped in a maze. Fox and I would watch them from the windows, from the patchy backyard playground behind Our Lady's Home for Disadvantaged Children. The blocked off with wire fencing dared us to climb it as it glinted in the weak sunlight. But any kid with sense would realize that fence had teeth. Sometimes we'd see soldiers, and we'd watch, fingers looping through the wire. Regular ones dressed in army green with rifles slung over their shoulders and haggard faces. Once, we saw a special one.

He had a cyborg eye as red as blood, with a scar to match. The steel around it seemed to catch light, even though the sky was overcast. I had heard of the cyborg eyes of the Uchiha that could slow time, of the prosthetic limbs that could morph into the sleek form of a gun or the wicked hook of a machete, but I'd never seen it. Yet there he was, leaning against the brick wall of the barber shop only yards away. He was smoking, watching the kids tumble around in the playground with a curled lip, when he caught sight of me. Maybe he was looking at us, Fox and me, but I always remember it as him seeing me.

Fox grinned, excited, and he pranced off, pretending he had a cigarette and a cyborg eye, but I kept watching. The soldier couldn't have been older than Yuu, the seventeen year old who kept saying he was going to join the army and "leave this hellhole" but never did. There was something dangerous about the soldier, like he was coiled tight as a spring and could lash out faster than I could blink. I could see the red eye turn slowly as it assessed me. He dropped his cigarette, ran a hand through his silvery hair, smiled crookedly. He fixed me with his normal eye, gray like woodsmoke.

"Later kid," was all he said. I watched him disappear down an alley, just as Fox came to yank on my arm.

"Dead boys comin'." The cold hand gripping my wrist isn't Fox's, and the dark gloom overhead isn't a rainy sky. My limbs freeze, my stomach roils in terror. Bile creeps up my throat. I look around wildly, but I only see eyes gleaming behind their jails. Waiting, watching. There's a wall of nurses gliding beside us, impassive. The one ahead of us is gripping a piece of paper.

Termination.

"Dead boys comin'," someone sings again. My head is still foggy, and I trip over my own feet, sluggish. They must have given me another needle somewhere along the way. My vision's blurred at the edges, fuzzy from the effects. That cold hand yanks me up harshly again before the floor rushes up to meet me, so that pain ripples through my shoulder. I see the boy from 2C walking with me, grim-faced. His grip tightens.

"Get up," he orders, and I'm shocked by the softness of his voice, how it hovers in the air. "Stay on your feet." He helps pull me up, more gently this time, and his fingers relax around my wrist, just slightly. No one has touched me just to do it since before I came here, six long months ago. It's oddly comforting.

My feet feel frozen. They took my socks. My toes are beginning to ache from the cold as we march down the stone hall. More cells. More boys. One cries. Another laughs. Then I see it, the maw to the Beast.

Shadows are playing along the descending hallway's black throat. Come play, they whisper, darting and fleeing as we approach. I can hear the metallic groan of something awful, a steaming hiss from the the underbelly of the asylum, and I wonder what they keep hidden down there. 2C keeps hold of me, and I'm grateful, because I can't decide whether to piss myself and bolt or go out fighting. I'm not that bad with my fists. Not bad at all. Fox may have teased me, but I can throw a damn good punch to the head. But time here has weakened me. My arms and stomach lost their muscle slowly over time. I'm thin now instead of lean. 2C doesn't seem to have fared much better, as he's just as thin, and a couple inches shorter.

But his grip is strong, and I think that's all I need. The hall's grown silent, and I know it's because everyone watching is thinking this could be me tomorrow. We move closer, closer. Closer than I've ever been to the edge of Hell.

No one ever comes out of the Pit.

2C says lowly in my ear, "Wait for it." I don't know what he means, but we keep walking. My fear makes everything look sharp and clear, and the adrenaline keeps my blood moving. A few more steps and we'll start to go down, but that's when something big happens. There's just enough time for 2C to grab me roughly, pull me down with him and roll away when the right half of the building collapses, explodes.

* * *

Once, a bomb exploded too close to Konoha's gates. Shrapnel and debris came sailing over the wall, just as deadly as any missile. Fox and I were in the playground. I was watching a swallow dip and swoop over the fence, alone on my swing by the gingko tree, when it happened.

A girl pushed Fox down in a mud puddle and called him a freak. I'd always liked her, even if she tried to push me down a lot and poured her porridge over my head for saying I liked her hair, because it was as pink as cotton candy. She acted tough, but her eyes were as green as grass and just as gentle. I heard her cry every night for her mother. She hit me when I had tried to console her, and Fox had laughed at me.

Sakura. That was her name. Like the cherry trees.

Fox was staring at me, blue eyes wide, red hair caked in mud. It was the only thing different about us. He always teased me for my hair color. I was as blond as a girl, he'd say, just to get a rise out of me. I always fell for the bait.

Fox was making that face. The one where his eyes went wide and his mouth hung open a little, like he couldn't believe what had just happened. He looked at me.

"Did you see what she did to me?" he yelled, standing and pointing at the girl, who had already skipped away. I rested my head against the rope to the swing. I didn't feel like fighting. Fox might have acted tough, but it was me he yelled for when he felt a stab of injustice.

"Did you see what she did to me?" he repeated. I shrugged, lazily pushing myself on the swing.

"I already got in trouble for punching that kid for you who stole the picture of Mom." We had a picture of her. Mom had had hair as red as Fox's I guess, but Fox would never let me touch it. He always kept it under his pillow. You'll get it dirty, he'd say. Fox was always getting me in trouble, but I couldn't help it if I loved my brother enough to do what he said. But maybe I was stupid. Fox stared at me.

"What's the worst that's gonna happen? You're gonna get your ear pulled and get shoved into a corner? Is that too much for you? She shoved me. You can't do this for me because you'd get the corner? Oh no, please, anything but the corner! I can't take it!" Fox flailed around, fell, pretended to die.

I got mad. The kind of mad that twists your gut and makes you feel like an idiot. "Fine!" I stomped over to her. She was playing alone with marbles right next to the orphanage. She didn't look up as I approached. I reached out, about to pull on one of her silky pink pigtails, when I heard the boom. It rattled my teeth, made me fall to the ground. Sakura screamed. There was a hiss and a wail from the sky, and I leaped, holding onto Sakura even when she bit me out of fright, protecting her from the rain of glass that fell on us.

Later, I would have scars. Later, I would hear cries of "Uchiha! Uchiha!" and see the flags of a clan symbol waving in the chilled autumn breeze. It would be lost on me until I was older; the fact that people in our own village had turned on us, sacrificed some of us for the sake of a diversion, staged a coup and assassinated the Hokage, all while forming their own treaty with the enemy. We were under new management, and all I knew was the pain of the glass in my skin and wild fear.

_Where was Fox_?

The war had ended, and Sakura didn't even remember my name.

* * *

The dust is so thick I can hardly breathe. It fills my nose, my mouth, until all I can taste is grit and mud. I start coughing, groaning because something, somewhere, is aching and searing with pain. I don't know what it is I've broken or sprained. My ears ring. There's shouting, screaming. Shapes silhouetted against the cloud of dust run past, back to freedom, back to the shadowed alleys of Konoha. Up ahead, the hallway leading to the beast is choked with rock and debris. Sirens are blaring. Somewhere, red lights are blinking along the walls that still stand.

"2C," I cough out, because I don't know his name, only his room number. I stand, trip over the body of a nurse and scramble away, feeling sick. Someone grabs me, and I fight for a second, until I recognize those cold fingers.

"Gaara," he says, and I blink at him in confusion for a second, until I realize he's told me his name. Gaara, I repeat in my head. We run, run as if we both are headed in the same direction, like we're linked and thinking the same thing. When we hit the outside, I have to close my eyes against the brightness.

Snow. Lots and lots of snow. It's falling from a dove gray sky, thick and fluffy so that it clumps in my hair, on my eyelashes. We're on a mountain, with spindly trees reaching towards the sky. I miss my socks as we stumble through it. We have minutes, seconds maybe, until the prison guard or the police are alerted and come marching, armed, to round us up like cattle back into our cells.

Gaara keeps pulling me, and I'm running faster than I ever have in my life towards the trees, towards some safe haven I hope exists. The snow is getting heavier, and the cold seems to be sapping the sky of its color, as its growing darker. My ears are still ringing, but the sirens' wail isn't far behind. My feet really are frozen I bet. The cold hurts, it aches. The snow reaches up to my bare knees, but I keep running like fire is licking at my heels.

That's when I see them up ahead, melting out of the half-light like shadows pulling free from the trees. I almost cry out and laugh in relief, and now I'm the one pulling Gaara. They're quiet as we stumble into the forest, silent behind their animal masks as they offer us blankets and cloaks and clothes and, thank you God, socks! There are hands clasping my shoulder, ruffling my hair in silent welcoming. Someone slaps me good-naturedly on the back, but I don't see him. My heart starts to pound then, and the mountain air seems too thin.

There were too many nights I laid in pain, immobilized, because he was supposed to be real. Too many nights I had chanted It wasn't me, it wasn't me. I swear, I swear to God I'm not making him up. I'm not crazy! My mind reels, the sirens still echoing into the twilight. Before I can panic and believe I've gone insane, I hear an owl cry from above, and Gaara taps me on the shoulder, his glass green eyes looking up. I follow his gaze. Perched in a tree, watching us from behind the mocking grin of an ivory fox mask, copper hair sticking out every which way, is Fox.


	2. Konoha's Prince of Thieves

_**Chapter 2: Konoha's Prince of Thieves**_

My Aunt Yan used to say I picked fights just like my mother did: stupidly. Fox and I were five, and Aunt Yan told us everyday how much we looked like our mother. She was a woman carved out of sand and fishing nets, dark from too many hours under the sun and bent at angle. She told us this was because she carried her sorrows on her back, like the story about the Whirlpool princess who carried the ocean on her shoulders. We would watch her hands, arthritic and slow, begging for more stories from Whirlpool country, but she never looked up from her fishing nets until she finished a knot. She used to keep us quiet by saying if we listened hard enough, we'd hear the sea whisper secrets. Sometimes we fell asleep listening. She'd smack us with her cane if we ever interrupted. Sometimes Fox would grow impatient and throw rocks or shells in the patch of sand she was working in. Once, she hit him, and I yelled at her.

"Stop it! No! You can't do that!"

She watched me for a moment, her narrowed until they seemed to disappear. "You pick your fights just like your mother. Stupidly." She slapped my knuckles with a leather belt. Five times, until my hand was red and stinging.

"When will you learn," she muttered, "…can't all be heroes…" She looked so ugly with that scowl on her face that I looked away and waited for the stinging to stop. Fox never said sorry. He only smacked my hand away when I showed him my knuckles.

We lived in a hut by the beach, right on Konoha's edge. The city skyline always looked like a stencil on paper, gray and too far away. Aunt Yan put rushes on the floor instead of carpet, and there was sand. Everywhere. Sometimes, Fox and I found little red crabs underneath the bed. We lived off of the sea, Aunt Yan's fishing nets, and her stories. We liked her best when she was sitting by the water, telling tales from Whirlpool, where the sea churned so angrily only death dared cross its raging waves. She told of whirlpools so large dragons were swallowed whole. Our favorite was the legend of the nine-tailed demon fox that lurked in Whirlpool's lush forests, feeding off anger and naughty children.

"So you better behave," she'd say, "Or the fox will gobble you up. It's how he stays alive. He keeps all the bad boys locked away in the fiery pit of his belly, until their anger makes him glow red." She'd wait to see if we trembled. We never did. Then she'd growl and we'd shriek with laughter, but at night we took turns watching the dark corner by the door. Once, Aunt Yan made a mask to go with her story. Ivory, with a vicious red grin. Every time, Fox and I fought over whose turn it was to wear it. Who would get to be the fox next.

"You can't be the fox," he'd tell me, snatching it away. "You can't do it right." Aunt Yan laughed, saying the mask worked for either of us, because we were both little demons.

So Fox kept the mask, and he'd watch me from behind it, grinning. Other nights, Aunt Yan told us stories of our mother, who'd been her niece once upon a time. She even kept a picture of our mother, framed on the small desk by the door.

"She was prettier than the Lady Hokage herself. She was strong. She had spirit, your mother." We pretended we knew what that meant. "And that was why your father loved her," Aunt Yan would finish, and Fox would grimace, angry in the dark beside me in our hammock.

"If he loved her so much, I bet she'd still be alive. If he loved her so much, then why did he disappear?" he'd whisper. Then he'd look at me and say, "I'm glad I don't look just like him." I'd get angry and shove him until he squawked or Aunt Yan yelled at us to be quiet. Each time, we'd ask Aunt Yan how did she die? Even though we knew, word for word. Aunt Yan always said, "Love."

Sometimes Aunt Yan would say her name, Kushina, and Fox and I would fall asleep tasting the name on our tongues. We would dream we had a mother. But when we woke to the sea and salty air, we liked Aunt Yan just fine.

She used to say that one day we wouldn't have her anymore. We never believed her. "If that ever happens," she told us one night, "I want you both to run." The way she said it made my stomach twist. I didn't understand, but the next day I went outside to play, and there was a man walking down the beach. He looked expensive, with his crisp suit and too long black hair and yellow eyes. I waved to him, and Aunt Yan dragged me back inside and smacked me. Told me I wasn't allowed outside for the rest of the day.

I didn't know why.

Aunt Yan didn't wake up one day after that. I ran from the house, to the edge of the water, and threw up. Fox took our mask and Mom's picture. We didn't take anything else. He took my hand.

Then we ran. And as Fox tugged me down the beach hard enough to make my shoulder sore, all I could remember was the night Aunt Yan told me nightmares weren't real, that they were the tricks and colors of faeries painted against the black canvases of our dreams.

I think of Aunt Yan when I see the fox's red grin. Can still hear her, see the neat strokes of her old hands on the dried, red paint. It still looks good. As white and eerie as ever, a wicked laugh in the dark. I find myself thinking that maybe Fox does play the demon well.

He's always liked his nightmares.

And Konoha is one all its own. As night begins to reign, it sings a lullaby, sways to it under a fat winter moon. Fox is oblivious to it, but I hear it.

_Hiss. Lock. Clink. Bang. Bang. Hiss._

I don't know what to do anymore about the cat in heat on the roof. Gaara and I stopped trying to get it to shut up hours ago. The beggar in the alley beneath the window is singing Konoha's anthem, dressed in army rags and shaking a tin can for coins. A bunch of street rat kids are setting firecrackers off in the street, and the cat keeps yowling and hissing.

It's no wonder I can't sleep. I haven't slept in two days, haven't bothered to lift my face from the musty springs of the mattress huddled in the cobwebbed corner of the Hideout. Maybe it's because when I dream I see the Beast and the boys in their jails. Maybe it's because I'm home and still can't believe it. It looks the same, everything does. I left and nothing changed. Same old dilapidated building that was set up for demolition years ago, yellow warning signs hanging in the dusty windows that no one cares about. Same floorboards that sigh and groan even under starving feet. The same shallow closet Fox and I used to hide in when we were little, pretending we had gold hidden in the cracked walls, and that we were untouchable. We were safe in the gloom of the closet, lost to a world only we knew. But now it's a memory that feels like water straining through my fingers. I can't seem to catch it. The same stained, naked mattress still sags in the corner under the window, like some loyal old dog that never leaves.

Once upon a time, this mattress used to make me snore so loudly Fox would throw shoes at my head. I could fall down on it, listen to its rusty groan, and sleep. One leg off the mattress. Fox teased me for it. Said I was the worst sleeper in the history of the world. When we were kids in our hammock by the sea, he'd get so pissed, because my foot would somehow find his nose, his eyes, his side. Now I lie so still I can hear a rat scurrying in the hallway. The prostitute's sultry laugh from two doors down as she unlocks the old dining room with its faded, moth eaten velvet drapes that had once been grand. I hear footsteps.

There's a dagger cradled in my left hand, and I grip it tighter, testing its wicked point with my finger. It sizzles, crackles at my fingertip, having been imbued with electricity that burns and stuns as it slices. The footsteps are closer, closer now. My chest tightens, my breathing slows. My heart's beating so hard I can feel it in my skull. Every footfall is the Warden in her combat boots, slow and deliberate and calculating. Every whisper in the alley below is a snitch, waiting to sell my secrets to the police. Whoever's in the hall is so close I can hear the low drum of his voice-

"Relax. It's not them."

I lurch forward out of instinct, so charged up I have to remind myself to calm down. I'm not alone, but that detail's easy to forget when you're in the dark, waiting for the Warden. Gaara's in a corner draped in a frayed cloak, a radio by his feet. It keeps spitting out white noise, fragments of voices from The Sentinel news station.

I wonder where Fox is as I listen, calm down, take a breath of moldy air. Gaara and I have been freezing our asses off in this little room for two days, lying low, waiting, waiting. For what I don't even fucking know anymore. Someone, something. The gang shoved us in here and only pokes their heads in every now and then, but I know they're around. I listen to Gaara's breaths slow, grow shallow with sleep, when I hear a muffled thud outside the window. There's a moment where no one moves at all. The gang makes the owl's call before they come inside. This person is quiet.

I grip the dagger and look to the window. There's a shadow crouched in the little window box with its dead flowers frozen in the chill. It's almost feline, his curved silhouette. I see the outline of the mask's pointed ears, it's mocking red mouth, before Fox opens the window. It creaks, and I grit my teeth. He leaps inside, nimble, spry, all black leather and mesh.

He's still wearing that damn mask, blue eyes glinting behind it, hair covered with a hood. He could have leaped out of a nightmare with that face. For a moment I can't look away, because every time I see him I have to wonder if he'll still be there if I look away, if I'll actually touch skin if I poke him.

"Have you been lying around all day?" Fox chuckles when I flip him off. I look away from him, pick at my bitten-to-shit nails when he plops down on the mattress next to me. He lifts his mask, wearing his shark smile, and I see my own face mirrored back at me minus the scars. We're twins in every sense of the word, except for our hair.

"You're so serious," he teases, slapping my cheeks like a kitten batting at a ball of yarn. "Lighten up before you freakin' depress me. I got you out, didn't I?" He rolls off the mattress and pulls a flask of whiskey from his flakk jacket. Gaara is watching him, cold and silent, when a disembodied voice rises from the radio. Konoha's anthem plays.

"..._will not tolerate these acts of terrorism_-"

"Turn it up." Fox sounds excited, and he's sitting up straight. Gaara obliges, but he frowns.

"..._Have my word, as Hokage, that the villains responsible will be apprehended_..." Fox laughs, and Gaara and I share a glance. The Hokage's voice fades away, to be replaced by the host of the newscast.

"_Fugaku Uchiha, Chief of Police, spoke in place of our Lord Hokage at the memorial this afternoon, held in respect for those who lost their lives during the bombing at the Senju Institute for Mental Health on Saturday. While the majority of the escaped convicts and patients have been safely returned, the Hokage and Chief of Police released a statement earlier today revealing that three men are still missing. Information regarding these men can be obtained from the Hokage Tower or the Police station. And now, a moment of silence, for the brave men and women who lost their lives, and the families who mourn them._"

Fox snorts and stretches languidly on the mattress, clapping me on the shoulder with a sigh. The newscaster moves on.

_"In other news, a warrant for the arrest of the decorated war hero, Kakashi Hatake, was issued last night-_"

I hear the owl cry, and a moment later, two more bodies climb in through the window. I know the masks. The frog, Chouji, and the monkey, Temari. Temari's got that kind of maternal voice that sets your teeth on edge and makes you listen to her like your life depends on it. Her hair's shorter, I notice. Chouji looks the same, and maybe he always will. The little fat boy we found roaming the streets, covered in soot and crying, because he hated being a chimney sweep a little more than he hated his drunk uncle. I remember he always watched Fox and me, and we knew he was jealous, that he wanted to be us. The rascals who ran through the alleys and cursed and spat, who climbed the boarded up buildings in the ghettos like monkeys and ran from the police laughing like there was no tomorrow. Who were thicker than blood together. And that is what Chouji wanted most of all. What all of us wanted.

So we whisked him away like thieves in the night, and he was the first recruit of our band. In the morning, all the police could find of him was the wiry brush he left behind in an oily puddle outside in the frost. They stopped looking for him after a few days. The rest came slowly after that. Dirty faces and sad eyes tired of being alone in the ghettos. Kids who escaped Social Services and the orphanage. Kids like Chouji.

They started looking for us, whispering about us in their beds and in the alleys. They came to find us, and we welcomed them. The adults began to worry, some got scared. Others said a murderer was kidnapping children in the night. Someone else sang of the Pied Piper and laughed about it. The police sniffed around, and stopped trying after a few months.

No one thought of Fox and me.

The animal masks were my idea, because I was jealous that Fox took the mask and wouldn't let me wear it. We broke into a little run-down shop with ethnic clothing and home decor from Whirlpool and Rain Country. The masks had faces that reminded me of Aunt Yan's painting, and we took them all. The next day the little shopkeeper raged, and said the ghettos had its own Prince of Thieves. Five years later we're still wearing them. I haven't put mine on in months, but it feels like years. Maybe an eternity. Temari and Chouji take theirs off so the masks hang around their necks.

"Turn that damn thing off," Temari hisses, glaring at Gaara like she's found a poisonous snake in her lap. I wonder why she's looking at him like that. "The streets are pretty clear. I think the search around this district is starting to die down." Temari watches me as she talks, like I'm a stranger. I stare right back until she looks away.

Chouji looks nauseous. "Did we have to do that? This isn't just going to blow over like nothing happened. People died. You promised," he points at Fox, who's draped himself in a chair, munching on an apple like nothing's wrong, "after Shishui Uchiha, that we wouldn't get dirty anymore-"

Fox leaps up from his chair, taking another bite of his apple as he circles Chouji, who watches warily. "Would you have rather had Naruto rot in there, Chouji?" He grabs Chouji's chin and forces him to look at me. Chouji doesn't look at me, and I don't look at him.

"Would you have rather rotted in there, big brother?" He says big brother like he's serious, not like the joke he usually heckles me with because I'm only two minutes older. I sigh, open my mouth to tell Fox to knock it off, but Temari beats me to it.

"Menma, stop it." Temari tries to intervene, but Fox holds up a hand to silence her. He smiles. I know that smirk. He's pissed. It's more like a baring of teeth.

"That's not my name."

She rolls her eyes. "Fox, Chouji's right, you told us-"

"Every drop of blood was worth it!" he snarls, and Temari flinches. I'm sitting up now, watching him, wondering what's going through his head. Gaara's eyes are closed, but I know he's listening.

"We're not criminals," Temari says softly, and I already know what Fox is going to say. Our eyes meet, eyes like mine bright with anger, and he slides his mask back into place, letting go of Chouji.

"No, we're not," he concedes, "But they are, and that's why we're here." We already know who they are, so no one says anything. The radio crackles again.

"No one gets left behind." Fox tosses his apple out the window, as if that explains everything and the conversation is over.

"Yeah? Well you left him behind in that hellhole for six fucking months. How do you think he is now after being in a place like that? How do you know he didn't say anything?" Temari challenges him. Fox stands so rigid I'm afraid he might hit her, so I stand up, prepared to step between them. Temari pretends like she can't feel my eyes on her, and she fidgets uncomfortably. I can't decide if I'm spitting mad or if she's just reasonable and I should let it slide.

Fox says, "You wouldn't rat me out, would you, brother?" A knot rises in my throat. It's painful. He's testing me, and for a minute I think I might hate him.

"He didn't," Gaara says suddenly, and we all stare at him in surprise. He's so quiet, it's easy to forget he's still here.

"They were still trying to get him to talk. Trying to understand why Shishui was killed that night." Gaara doesn't say I let Fox's name slip, he doesn't say that once he probably heard me tearing at the metal bars in my cell until my nails bled yelling that Fox better be real and out there and grateful, because I had done it all for him, that doctors tried to tell me I was insane. That they never stopped to think I had a twin.

It took them five months, three weeks, and a day to get me to say Fox. Countless fat lips, split knuckles, one black eye, a hundred pieces of chalk, a couple rounds of shock therapy, and quarantine for breaking a guard's nose when I said to hell with it and tried, foolishly, to make a break for it. Right down the hallway to the Beast, wearing nothing but the papery hospital gown while the boys in their cells screamed and hooted and shook their fists.

They caught me in the alleys on the night of the summer festival, leaping over a dumpster trying to make a break for the twisted fire escape dangling from an apartment complex like a dead vine. I squinted against the harsh glare of their bright lights pinning me as a criminal, wincing against the pop of fireworks, so loud I could barely hear the whir of their guns charging. I jumped, slicing my palm open on a rusted step, trying to scale up the side of the building.

Then I saw Fox, his silhouette stark against the white burst of a firework. He was hunched like a gargoyle on the roof of the next building over, watching me from behind the sly grin of his fox mask, unnoticed by the police. I knew he was coming, that our group wouldn't be far behind.

Nobody ever got left behind, but I'd be damned if any of them got caught. He was signaling me, but I didn't listen. I took one look behind me and stopped climbing. I saw him freeze, stand up so fast he was lost in the dark between fireworks. No one escapes the Uchiha's Task Force. I was still dangling on the fire escape when a metal wire wrapped around my ankle and dug in until it stung. They ripped me down hard to the street, cursing and kicking and bleeding. I punched one of the police officers in the jaw, sending him flying, only to have another clock me back so hard I heard a crack when his fist collided with my nose.

The world blurred into one bland picture. Dirty alleys, trash, a too-bright night sky, and the leering faces of Uchiha officers, fixing me with their cyborg eyes. One bent down low, low enough to whisper in my ear, but all I noticed as he descended were the three spinning black lenses in his red eye, dilating and rotating like pupils in malicious glee.

That night in July, I was arrested for the murder of Shishui Uchiha, and when they dragged me down the street, I looked back to see Fox's face pressed against the dirty glass of the Hideout. I did it for him. Let them catch me, for Fox.

Gaara starts playing with his radio again, as if he never said anything at all. Fox claps his hands like it's all said and done and forgotten.

"Well alright then. See, Temari? No harm done." He has this casual, bright way of talking, as if everything's good and right with the world, and I can't help but feel some of my tension lift.

No harm done.


	3. The Cage

_**Chapter 3: The Cage**_

The night is icy and loud. I feel like I'm flying as we leap over patched rooftops. The ghetto drinks, laughs, repeats. No one bothers to look up. The winter air sticks in my throat, clears my head, and I love the burn in my lungs as I run. I'm glad I didn't tell Fox no, that I wasn't ready to leave the Hideout. I didn't know if I wanted to see Konoha, glinting under a thin layer of frost. But then Gaara rose, despite Temari's protests that it was too risky, that Fox was being an idiot. Fox had only laughed and said, relax, they need a little fresh air, right guys?

I can see him up ahead, through the holes in my dog mask, looking more alive under the moonlight than I could ever remember. I keep having to remind myself he's real. I wonder where he's taking us. Fox's idea of fun is everything from a beer at the Silver Leaf to vandalizing a government building and slandering the Hokage. It's how we roll, ever since Konoha collapsed and built itself back up again under Uchiha rule. We never forgot that they cut the orphanage's funding without giving a shit, let us all loose like rats looking for a hole to hide in after they took down Our Lady's Home for Disadvantaged Children to build a memorial. A cemetery for the Uchiha's dead. The ghettos grew wild and untamed, a canker sore festering in the village as the Uchiha herded the lower class, the beggars, the activists, the rebels, behind its walls.

I guess they might have thought it was justice, since their clan had been rounded up and thrown into the ghettos while the Fire Country's civil war raged. The Hokage had been afraid of betrayal. The Uchiha were backstabbing villains, and Fox never let us forget it.

I see the flashing neon sign for the Silver Leaf up ahead, flickering like a dying blue heartbeat, and I hear Fox laughing. I know then we're not going for a drink, and I stop running. Gaara pauses, staring at me through his racoon mask. Fox turns and calls out to me. "You comin' brother?" He throws his arms wide, as if embracing the shadows. "It's a perfect night to fight, isn't it?" He whoops and pumps his fist while the rest of the gang hollers, dropping from the rooftop to the alley.

The cage fights were Fox's idea, when we were fifteen and tired of smuggling drugs for a buck. The Uchiha might have ruled with a keen eye and patrolled the streets with iron fists, but it was the Naras who played Konoha like a marionette in a dark corner. There was a saying about the mafia, and the Naras loved to spread the whispers. Cross paths with a Nara, and you'd be dead before you could move, not that you'd be able to run anyway. But when it came to Shikaku Nara, his wife was scarier, once you got past the scar and the apathetic attitude and his bodyguards. We called him "Boss" for shits and giggles, and because we knew it annoyed him. Boss had a son. A lazy smartass who took to following us because he was bored with his exciting mob family life, if only to complain and point out that we were sloppy, and that we were doing whatever we were doing wrong; there was a better way, a different strategy. But we became fast friends with Shikamaru, and I wouldn't have had it any other way.

I haven't seen Shikamaru since the night before I was caught and apprehended for murder.

Last spring Boss made a bet on an underground fighter. Cage fighting was illegal, but it was a good vein to tap into for quick cash and a few desperate buyers who lurked in the audience. Sometimes even the fighters themselves. When Shikamaru told Fox how much his father made, Fox had an idea. I remember how he grinned and looked over his shoulder at me, and we snickered, like making cash was about to get easier than stealing candy from a baby.

In the arena, we're known as the Demon. We wear nothing but the clothes on our backs and the fox mask, and that's what makes the audience go wild. In a cage fight, fighters always bring their most illegal cyborg eyes and limbs. I don't know what it is about us that keeps alive and winning in that metal cage. It's more than Fox's shark smile or my wicked left hook. I don't know what it is, but it's always been there. We'd switch off, one in the cage while the other sat gambling in the audience. We liked to say it wasn't cheating, just a better way of playing the game.

Shikamaru gawks at me when the band and I round the corner and into the hazy pool of light on the street. He doesn't have to see my face, just my mask, to know it's me. He hasn't changed a bit, and the thought brings a smile to my lips. Same ponytail, same jacket, same slouch. He says, "Yo, Blondie. Long time no see," while throwing a narrowed glare Fox's way. He's not an idiot, but he keeps his mouth shut anyway.

The bar smells like beer and cloves and sweat, drenched in ruddy light and buzzing with voices and outdated music. Walking inside is like walking into a wall of body heat, there's so many people here tonight. Someone's laughing like a hyena up by the counter, and the sound sets my teeth on edge. Suddenly I don't want to be here. Takes me a minute to remember I'm behind a mask and not showing my face to the public. I find myself searching faces, dreading the fact that someone could recognize me if they look closely enough. Fox claps me on the back, and I nearly jump out of my skin, biting down on the inside of my cheek so hard I taste blood. He laughs, like my tension is funny.

"Relax, big bro," he teases, plopping down on a bar stool and pulling a busty older girl into his lap. She squeals like a little girl, and her friends giggle. They love the masks and like to imagine handsome faces behind them. Fox lifts his mask enough to plant a kiss on the girl's cheek, and one of her girlfriends hangs on my shoulder, whispering in my ear. She smells like ashes and cheap perfume. She tries to lift my mask, giggling when I grab her fingers.

"Oh come on, just for me?" She pouts, batting her eyes.

I disentangle myself and look around. The band's getting comfy. Ordering drinks, flirting. Temari is watching Fox with murder in her eyes. Or maybe she just wants to cry, I don't know. She's wasting her time on my brother, though. He falls for anyone who can flirt back and fuck. My brother raises a toast, a shot of whiskey, and the bar cheers. Someone else starts waving their fox mask; they want it signed.

It's clever, really, if I think about it. When we started winning big, our fans started buying masks. Kids would play in the street wearing them. One time a boy wearing a fox mask was taken down by the police and beaten before their realized their mistake. Now they're more careful, and I know Fox has strutted right past them more than once.

Then it starts. Fox rises, and the band and I follow him down to the basement, the bar's tenants slowly following in a trickle. There's another flight of stairs leading down from the basement from a trap door in the concrete floor. It goes down, down, down, and I pause, heart in my throat. I can almost hear the clink, clink, clink of the Beast as it gnashes its jaws. But it isn't the Beast, and Gaara is nudging me forward. I find myself wondering how he's always right there, quiet and calm, like he's always watching. Not for the first time, I wonder how he got tied up with Fox. I wouldn't know, since he never talks unless he has to, and I don't ask.

Fox is calling for me, and I step down, acting like nothing happened. The dark goes on for too long, but then I see the arena. An old beggar used to live on the Silver Leaf's porch, and he told me once, "There ain't nothin' like a good fight to get your blood roarin' eh, boy?" There really wasn't. The best part wasn't just the fighting under those hazy fluorescent lights while people screamed and cheered and bet on you, it was the feeling of freedom and euphoria that filled you fit to burst when you won.

A fighter's high. I never feel more alive.

The narrow hallway opens up, like the throat of a flower to a bloom. Voices carry and echo, and the lights overhead are bright enough to make me squint. There's already too many people, and some are opting to sit on the floor around the arena, where the cage sits on a platform of concrete mottled brown from old blood that won't come out. A big black spiderweb of gleaming metal. There's a sharp smell of frying oil and something coppery. The voices rise higher, and I know the gambling has just begun.

Fox and the others start to point and guffaw, and I turn my head to see what's going on. A tall grizzly of a man stumbles in front of us, squealing and covering his white head as a waitress tries to viciously smack him over the head with a frying pan.

"In the name of all that's holy, woman!" he yelps, shaking in his knock-off designer clothes. I snicker at the sight. He's a huge man, stuffed into a red-and-white shirt that wants to pass for silk and a fake leather coat and hair that he's tied into a loose ponytail at the base of his neck. It's way too long, touching the back of his knees.

"Don't you get touchy-feely again, Jiraiya, or I'll get the bouncers to throw your ass out on the street!" the waitress yells.

Jiraiya feigns innocence. "Moi? Touch you in such a lecherous way? Oh, Shizune, you wound me." She huffs and stomps off, and the old man waggles his eyebrows at me like a kid caught with the cookie jar.

"It's all about charm, kid," he says, clapping me on the shoulder like I'm some long lost friend. I stare at his hand on my shoulder, wondering why he's touching me, when Fox throws himself at Jiraiya like a kid wanting a piggyback ride. The gang hoots and hollers, and Jiraiya laughs, throwing Fox off gently before my brother can give the old bear a noogie.

"Ohohoho, you little shit, I don't think so!"

Fox hooks an arm around Jiraiya's neck. "Brother, meet our sponsor." I stare at him, forgetting about not wanting to be here, because I'm too pissed to think about anything else. Fox is reckless. Sometimes he's downright dangerous. But I didn't think he was stupid. Why would he risk our band by letting in a greedy old outsider?

Fox seems to read my mind, because he points to the cage. "I'm tellin' you, brother, Jiraiya knows what he's doin'. He makes winners." Jiraiya tuts fondly at this, and my eyes widen when I see a man slipping into the cage. I know him. I've seen that man before, and it brings back memories of deadly skies, Sakura, and a lonely swing. Long, lean torso, silvery hair, scar over his left cyborg eye. The special soldier. He rolls his shoulders, looks over at Jiraiya, and the old man gives him a thumbs up. The soldier flips him off while Jiraiya hoots. His lazy gaze lingers a second too long on my dog mask, and I narrow my eyes at him.

"Konoha! Are you ready to ruuuuumble!?"

The crowd goes wild, and a larger, beefy fighter with a prosthetic arm that looks like it could snap bones in half steps into the ring, yelling and taunting his opponent gleefully while milking cheers and laughs from the crowd. The gang is quiet, watching raptly. "Shit," Shikamaru says, "He doesn't have a chance against the Scarecrow."

I'm wondering which one is Scarecrow, when the fighters suddenly begin, not even waiting for the bell to chime a second later. The soldier flies at his opponent. The other fighter sidesteps, barely, but his metal arm is already churning. Firearms aren't allowed in the arena, so I wonder what he'll pull. His metal fist clenches, and he dives. The soldier leaps over his opponent, yanking on his ponytail mischievously as he sails right over the fighter's head. The crowd laughs. The metal fist rams hard enough into the cement to leave a cracked dent in the floor. The fighter plucks his arm up and whirls around, baring a blade. The soldier evades each slash with extreme speed, but he's a second too slow and the crowd gasps when blood begins to drip from a gash under his right eye. The soldier ducks under another swipe and pops up into the fighter's face to deliver a blow so hefty the man spits out a bloody tooth and stumbles. He slashes again, but the soldier moves like water, ducking, moving with the jabs, until he catches the metal arm, pits his strength, and throws.

What he does next leaves everyone chanting his arena name: "Scarecrow, Scarecrow, Scarecrow!"

Scarecrow holds onto his opponent's arm and looks him dead in the eye until he stops wrestling back and starts to wail like a boy wanting his mother. Fox and the others laugh, but I don't. I only get angry, and wonder what it is about Scarecrow's eye that has such a huge man bleating like a lamb. Scarecrow breaks off the metal arm with brute strength I can't help but admire, showered by sparks and blood.

The bell chimes higher above the screams, and the winner is announced. Scarecrow just won, and Jiraiya just got himself and that soldier a shit ton of money. I know, because the old man is practically drooling at the mouth and clapping his hands. The solider leaves the cage and ambles over, narrowly avoiding Jiraiya's high-five.

"Whatcha got here, Jiraiya? Fresh meat?" he drawls, looking at me. Jiraiya laughs, and tells Fox to go get ready. "You're next! Make me proud, boy. I arranged this match just for you. Special." He winks, but before Fox can slip away I grab him by the wrist. He follows me to a shadowed corner.

"What the hell is this?" I explode when we're by ourselves, or as close to it as we're going to be. "Are you out of your fucking mind, putting us up with a sponsor? We do this alone, Fox." It's like my senses are on overdrive, and my paranoia has reached an all time high. I shouldn't have listened to Fox. I shouldn't be here, out in public like this only two days after, and Fox shouldn't be bringing new people in at a time like this-

"Re-freakin'-lax, brother. Shacking up with the old man ain't gonna do anything to us. He's a greedy bastard, but I doubt he'll sell us out. Besides, we're gonna make some green. You know how much money explosives cost?"

I glare at him. "We shouldn't even be out here. We shouldn't be fighting. I thought we'd be watching or-"

Fox snorts. "This is the thanks I get for saving your ass and bringing you out for a good time?" Suddenly he pulls off his mask and makes a grab for mine. We wrestle, but he wins. He puts his fox mask on my head, wearing his shark smile.

"Make it up to me, brother." He sneers, and suddenly he's gone, leaping away laughing before I can catch him. The bell chimes and I stop dead when Jiraiya claps me on the shoulder. He notices the change, but if he's surprised, he doesn't seem to care, because I'm the one wearing the mask.

"You're up," he sings, and I'm so angry I don't know what else to do but follow him and yank on my hood when he pulls me forward. The crowd's chanting, low and excited and breathless. Demon. Demon. Demon.

I pass Scarecrow, and he fixes me with a cool stare. "Show me what you got, kid," he says, throwing back a congratulatory shot of whiskey.

Jiraiya flanks me until I reach the cage and step inside, promising to give Fox the beating of a lifetime once I get out of here. Hopefully unmaimed. He knows I'm in no real condition to fight. The bastard. The gang is gaping at me, probably wondering why the hell I'm in the cage and not Fox, but then they start cheering. Gaara stays quiet, watching me from a shadowed corner.

"Are you ready for round two, Konoha?" the announcer shouts, and I glower at the bodies jumping up and hooting and screaming, but they're hard to see under the harsh glare of the lights.

"Then leeeeeett'sss fiiiiight!"

A teen boy looking to be about my age steps into the cage, and I bark out a bitter laugh. He's blindfolded, moving slowly, deliberately, like he's feeling out the floor. Tall, lithe, like a panther. Spiky black hair, and from the looks of it, a pretty boy face. I snort, hoping I still got some sting as I hop from foot to foot and roll my shoulders, adrenaline roaring. My opponent takes a wide stance, and I grit my teeth, clenching my fists.

Somewhere, I can almost hear Fox laugh as he says, you can't do it. I know you can't.

The bell chimes, and the boy tugs on his blindfold until it falls away. My heart beats a little faster, and I start to wonder if I have a chance, but the thought only fuels me. His dark irises begin to bleed red, and while I try to figure out how the hell he's doing that without a cybokinetic prosthetic, I realize I know that red gaze. So well it fills me with rage and wonder as the three pupils appearing in his eyes spin mockingly as they focus on me.

He's an Uchiha.

* * *

A/N: Those of you who've read the second chapter already, I redid the chapter because I really wasn't happy with it before (I am now!) and split it into two different chapters because it grew to a length of 7k words. Sorry if it seemed like an update. HOWEVER, the update days for this story will be **Fridays, starting next week March 15th.** Also, there's a new clue concerning the asylum and some of the plot that wasn't in the second chapter before. So no, the asylum part of this isn't dead. It's small, but it links two characters. Maybe you suspected this before, maybe you read over it before. Did you find it?

Also, I started this with Fox as an OC, based off Road to Ninja, since there was an alternate Naruto who was supposedly evil. I thought that was cool and Fox was born. As I redid this though, I decided to actually use Menma. I don't know what Menma's true hair color is since it's black because of (according to wiki) meshing with Tobi, but in this story, he's a redhead, mmmk? Mmk. Leave any thoughts if you have any. Thanks for reading! Sorry for the long A/N xD


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